Cape Breton business leaders dream of reviving dormant rail line. Can the math work?

For more than a decade, empty rail tracks have faded into Cape Breton’s picturesque landscape, evoking the loss of the industrial economy that was once the lifeblood of the Nova Scotia island. But business people like Jim Kehoe have never stopped pushing for the return of freight trains. Kehoe owns rope manufacturing companies in the area around Sydney, the largest population centre in the sprawling Cape Breton Regional Municipality. He used to bring in raw material by rail; now it’s transferred to trucks in Port Hawkesbury, just off the mainland, for the 130-kilometre trip to Nova Scotia’s se…